Ghost Protocol is the rarest type of film, one where I never once notice its length. It could have gone for three hours and I wouldn’t have noticed. It combines the best of a thriller and an action movie, where it entertains between all the big set pieces, and of course really shines during those big set pieces. Going in, I was a bit worried. Not only did I believe that movies are an inefficient medium for this type of entertainment, I remembered that I hated this type of film. It shares qualities of James Bond and Jason Bourne, but it’s actually a good-time movie, one with the imagination and light-heartedness to stand apart from its overly gritty contemporaries.

A few years ago, probably 2007 or whenever Casino Royale came out, I came to terms with my thoughts on the action movie, and the thriller movie. In trying to parse out just why I didn’t like Casino Royale, or any James Bond movie not starring Pierce Brosnan (although strangely I suppose I did enjoy The Man with the Golden Gun when I saw it), I happened upon a television, which had on display Jason Statham’s face. I decided that this was The Transporter, or one of its sequels, and thought hey I like Jason Statham. Something happened to me then that had never happened before: in ten seconds, I was overwhelmingly bored by a movie. It was just him expositing, talking about drugdealers or something. I recognized this scenario as one of obligatory exposition, and couldn’t handle it.

When two characters sit down and move forward the plot, sometimes that’s fine, if the story is interesting enough. The story in an action movie is rarely exciting, even if it isn’t formulaic: guy’s daughter is kidnapped, goes after those responsible to bring her back. Is that Commando, or Taken? If it’s girlfriend it could be The Marine and a number of side-scrolling beat-em-ups on the Nintendo. The Hollywood action movie is also typically a high-budget affair, so set-pieces are those invested in. You can’t pack ninety minutes of high-budget action into a movie — those in-between moments are a necessity. Some filmmakers are able to make the in-between just as entertaining, like Robert Rodriguez or Jonnie To. Others aren’t.

Now, when you say “thriller,” my mind goes right to Jason Bourne. When I saw The Bourne Ultimatum in theatres, I must have been fourteen. I wanted an action movie. But this thriller didn’t have enough action to compete with John Woo, and not enough drama to be anything else. I simply could not wrap my mind around what made those movies so popular. Nowadays I get it, though I still have yet to revisit that particular trilogy. Maybe when Jeremy Renner stars in The Bourne Legacy, I’ll check that one out. One series that this confusion still holds for is Bond, because none of those movies — with the exception of the nineties and early 2000s era — have over-the-top action (or Colin Salmon*). And of course, none of them have compelling stories or drama.

All that leaves is the character. James Bond is similar to Indiana Jones — he’s cocky and he’s a womanizer, but James Bond to me isn’t nearly as cool. Probably because being cool is the only thing he’s there to be. He drinks his drink and has PG to PG-13 sex with women, never once drinking from the Holy Grail or, I don’t know, tossing the idol. Where’s the draw? I’ll take Mission: Impossible over James Bond any day, although ironically Ghost Protocol is the only one I’ve seen in full.

Ghost Protocol does not deal in overwrought storytelling — its exposition is light on its feet, being delivered while other things are going on, and never the exact center of attention. While story is being processed, beautiful locales are on display and characters are interacting with their often witty back-and-forths. Here characters are actually intriguing despite being flat, such that I genuinely hope to see all four back in another movie, hopefully teamed up with Ving Rhames. Maggie Q I could go either way on. Simon Pegg is Simon Pegg — put him in a good movie and he’s great (in a bad one he’s good), Paula Patton is the attractive and very badass agent, and Jeremy Renner is the data analyst — with a secret. Each character gets his or her moment in the sun, so they don’t feel like dead-end red shirts or useless expendables here to make Tom Cruise look more like an action star. He does look an action star — I think the gratuitous rock-climbing sequence in Mission: Impossible II he demanded from director John Woo is evidence enough.

Beyond that, most of the time the actual exposition is, quite simply, compelling. As an operation is being laid out it’s pretty neat, but doesn’t of course match up to the execution. The gadgets and even the ingenuity these characters utilize make for very tense, very creative near-future espionage situations. It’s like Metal Gear Solid, but just a movie, not a movie with quick-time events. In one instance, a massive image screen is used to fool a guard into believing nobody is in the hallway, when in fact Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise are there, and in another, the team fools two people into believing they are meeting in one room, while in reality, two meetings are taking place, and they’re intercepting information. In the latter example, disguises and contact lens cameras are required, and when things go wrong, fast-thinking and briefcases that print paper inside get thrown into the mix.

While the ending maybe isn’t as climactic as one would imagine it should be, and the denouement feels a pint cheesy, I enjoyed it all. In fact, the former helped me along with the whole time thing. When the climax hit, I hardly realized. Tom Cruise was fighting the villain, and I thought to myself: Oh, this movie must be over soon. That’s kind of sad.

I really don’t have much to say here: it’s a very good time at the movies, a true blockbuster that doesn’t push genre boundaries, but revels in its form. I don’t know why this movie wasn’t called Mission: Impossible IV (who am I kidding, of course I do) but hopefully it isn’t the last sequel, and there’s much more to come. And although I did mention earlier that movies are an inefficient medium for this kind of thing (something I’ll try to expand on later), TV or video-games can’t always have Tom Cruise scaling the largest skyscraper in the world.

Man, when he said “mission accomplished,” and pushed the button, I died in laughter.

*Colin Salmon is a totally cool guy. Anybody who likes Paul WS Anderson movies should recognize him, and he was going to be the next Bond on the recommendation of Pierce Brosnan. But the studios went with Craig. Nothing against Daniel Craig, of course. He was great in the Dragon Tattoo, another movie out right now worth seeing. Make it a double feature.

5 comments

I skipped this one in favor of Sherlock Holmes II, but I still want to see it. I think I’m in the minority because the first M:I is my favorite, but I enjoyed the second one and… I guess the parts that I can remember about part three weren’t awful. I know that Philip Seymour Hoffman made a good villain, but fuck me if I can remember anything else about it.

I’m not surprised that they didn’t call it Mission: Impossible IV, but it seemed a little strange that the posters and trailers put GHOST PROTOCOL in a huge font and Mission: Impossible in fine print above. Usually it’s the opposite, you know, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN something something or INDIANA JONES and the whatever of who cares.

Your reference to Metal Gear Solid intrigues me. Even though I’ve stopped playing video games pretty much completely over the last decade, I still have a place in my heart for Snake, and I’m always on the lookout for any movie that can potentially capture what made the games so good. I figure we’ll probably never get a Metal Gear movie, and it’ll probably suck if we do, but sometimes the best adaptations are the unofficial ones. (H. P. Lovecraft, for one.) I’ve been told that 24 is Metal Gear: The Series, but I got bored less than halfway through the one episode I tried to watch, and I don’t remember anything particularly Metal Gearish about it.

I was totally on board when I heard Brosnan recommending Salmon for the job, but I wasn’t under any illusion that it was ever going to happen. It’s a shame, because as much as I like Craig, Salmon is at least equally awesome (and suited for the part).

Funny you bring up Pirates because I remember seeing TV spots where they showed “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” and said only “Pirates of the Caribbean,” or better yet “Pirates.” That always tickled me.

I suppose they’ve been doing the title thing since the Beginning, Halloween, Alien, Rambo, etc, but giving a movie like MI a subtitle where the others doesn’t is an odd choice because it gives it significance where in terms of a movie series ‘arc,’ the story has none. The tile says this is the ‘Ghost Protocol’ story, not just another entry — but ‘Ghost Protocol’ has no bearing on the series…

I understand of course that it’s called Ghost Protocol because it’s embarassing to have such high numbers, (which is why I give credit to Final Destination 5) and that’s the state of movies today.

24 is definitely not Metal Gear: The Series. I tend to like it, because the first few seasons have genuinely good moments of suspense, and the later seasons are easy to parody (check out Fast Karate for the Gentleman), but overall it’s more like a low-tech version of Ghost in the Shell. There’s no tactical espionage, it’s more of a brute force counter-terrorist team that types things on keyboards and then sends Kiefer in for endless torture of suspects.

I recently rented and watched both MI3 and MI4 (sorry, I’m not doing this “Ghost Protocol” nonsense anymore), and I’ve also been watching Season 1 of 24 through DVDs on loan from a friend. First things first: MI4 is easily the best of the four films, although MI3 does a couple of things better: it’s got a much better villain, and more Ving Rhames. MI4, though, has better action scenes (not, thank fucking God, directed in that spastic TV style), more humor, more Simon Pegg, and more emphasis on teamwork, the last of which makes it feel more like a legitimate MI movie than its predecessors.

As for 24, I’m surprised at how good it is. I’m just past the halfway point right now (episode 13 or 14, I think), and I’ve been taken in by the suspense hook, line, and sinker. I continually find myself having to watch just one more episode before I go to bed to see what happens next, and of course that turns into three or four episodes. How the hell do they do that?

As for the comparisons to Metal Gear, I didn’t see much in that until about episode 11 or 12, when Jack had to infiltrate an enemy compound and all of a sudden I was watching Metal Gear Solid come to life. (There was even a Sniper Wolf segment.) If the filmmakers responsible for this season were assigned to a Metal Gear movie, I wouldn’t object. I thought the director’s name, Stephen Hopkins, looked familiar, so I looked him up, and sure enough, he directed Predator 2, which I consider to be vastly underrated. But yeah, overall the series doesn’t seem to be Metal Gear: The Series… it seems to be James Bond, Mission: Impossible, Metal Gear, and Jason Bourne thrown into a blender. And it’s an enjoyable blend so far, I must say.

A lack of Ving Rhames is noticeable in truly all movies without Ving Rhames.

I’ve only seen a few seasons of 24, the last two (laugh-riots, especially if you tune into the episode-by-episode commentary by Fast Karate for the Gentleman), and the first two. I’ve been meaning to finish the third. I was also surprised by the quality of the first season. Genuine suspense and drama with all the good political and techno-babble that made for a unique and memorable television show. And Kiefer, of course — forever Jack “Tell Me Where X Is” Bauer. Homeland might be the more critically acclaimed show, but it lacks the melodramatic inclinations of a true blockbuster.

Predator is not my favorite SF/horror movie series, nor is the original my favorite classic Arnold outing, but I did think Predator 2 was underrated. Not to the criminal degree of the Matrix sequels or Alien 4, but — it had Bill Paxton AND Adam Baldwin. 24 may not be live-action Metal Gear Solid but I wonder, with the newest title being called Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance — will Hollywood execs just be scared away from the franchise to put the brakes on any movie adaptation?